"The House By The Lake", by Thomas Harding
A book about a house – nothing to get excited about, you might think. But this is a house that was built at Groß Glienicke in Berlin, which later would come to sit right on the border between East and West Berlin.
It begins in 1915, when the house was built, and covers some of the most dramatic periods in European history – WWI, the rise of National Socialism, WWII, the push of the Soviets into Germany, the partition of the two Germanys, the building of The Wall, and finally the reunion of the two Germanies. Five families lived in the house during that time, and the book follows their stories, and at the same time gives us a social and political history of 100 years of German history, seen through the eyes of the people who lived it.
Written by British author Thomas Harding, himself descended from the Alexander family who first built the house, it's an immaculately researched book and written in an easy style that makes you feel you do know all these people. While some of them might have been described as opportunistic, he enables us to understand them, so we simply absorb their stories without judging. Others simply made the best they could of unusual and sometimes unhappy circumstances.
To anyone who has an interest in history, to anyone who is interested in learning how people cope with day-to-day living under frightening regimes, I highly recommend this book.
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